


After The War

by LittleHailCloud (LittleSnowCloud)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Character Death, Grief, M/M, Memory, Reflection, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-04 21:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18821494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSnowCloud/pseuds/LittleHailCloud
Summary: He hadn’t been fast enough. Or maybe strong enough. Or maybe perceptive enough. It didn’t really matter which one. Either way, he hadn’t been enough. He’d never been enough and now Tsubaki is gone and he has nothing but a cold house and the sunrise.Or: That time I put Tsubaki in an archer’s range without realizing and he died with Hinata a tile away.





	After The War

They say the war is over. Hinata supposes that that is true.

They say everything is better now. Hinata doesn’t understand that part. 

They say to let go. Hinata doesn’t know how to explain how quickly that would kill him. 

Quick as an arrow. An arrow slicing through feather, through armour, through flesh and organ and bone and life. 

He wakes up before sunrise again. He gets up. He washes himself. Washes his hair. He brushes it, carefully, just like those gentle hands had guided him back then. He rubs oil through the strands, pulls them up on his head, ties it out of his scarred face. He presses his clothes so there are no wrinkles. He takes a moment to look at himself. He is as beautiful as Tsubaki was always so sure he could be. 

It’s still dark when he goes to sit by the window, but the sky is lightening. 

It’s cold in this house. 

The memories come, harshly, as acidic and poisonous as always, laced with guilt like arsenic, but what can you do but take the dose and wait for immunity to build? 

Or maybe he just needs the pain.

It had been early morning. The soft light of a just-rising sun slanting through the trees, lacing Tsubaki’s body in liquid gold- so strong, so  _beautiful,_ surely unbreakable. His pegasus was restless, shifting beneath him and Tsubaki had laughed. “Looks like my girl’s ready to fly, eh, Hinata?”

Hinata had always loved the way Tsubaki said his name. Each syllable bounced off that perfect tongue like he relished the taste of them and the look of smug affection that always seemed to accompany it somehow did nothing but strengthen this thought. 

And Hinata had patted the winged horse on the neck and agreed. He shouldn’t have, should have grabbed the reins and held tight to them, should have held Tsubaki’s hand held tight to him, should have pulled him down, kissed him, loved him, loved him perfectly like he had so deserved to be. If Hinata had known. But he had agreed. And Tsubaki flew from him. 

He didn’t get far. 

The pegasus had swung up in a wide arc around Hinata, massive wings catching the warm currents of air and curving with them before one flap sent him forward, across the battlefield. Hinata has started to run soon after. He didn’t want to lose sight of Tsubaki, he wanted to be there when that beautiful beast that bore him swooped downward, towards some enemy or another, wanted to help him fight, same as always. But Tsubaki didn’t get far enough. 

At first Hinata didn’t know what it was. He just saw something shoot through the air, glinting in the sun. He realised the moment before it struck. He doesn’t remember screaming. Some of the others say he did. They were close enough to hear. They said it was the single most horrific sound they’d ever heard in their lives, agony given life, the sound of a soul being destroyed. 

He remembers the pegasus screaming. 

He remembers Tsubaki screaming. 

Two bodies, equine and human, plummeting from the sky in a flurry of blood and feathers, an angel falling from heaven, the air searing his wings from his back as he clawed for the sky he’d so loved, his holiness ripped from him with the impersonal coldness of an arrow. 

He remembers the blood. He remembers praying to nothing, to everything, to  _something,_ for that blood to be that of the horse, just the horse, just that damned beast that took his Tsubaki into the sky. 

The pegasus was already dead. Tsubaki was not. It had taken everything in Hinata to shift the pegasus’ body off of Tsubaki’s lower half. He’d held him, cradled him, really, had brushed that beautiful red hair out of his perfect face, had did his best not to cry because that would blur his vision and he didn’t want his view of Tsubaki to be obscured, like somehow if he just kept clear sight of him then his legs wouldn’t lay like that, with no feeling, lifeless, uncontrolled, his breathing would stop rattling wetly in his chest, the blood would stop bubbling up his throat. 

“Hinata?”

Even now, even  _now,_ he said his name with so much care. So much love. “Tsubaki?” And dammit, his voice broke. 

“Don’t... Don’t frown like that... You’ll get wrinkles.”

He laughed once, the sound as wet as Tsubaki’s breathing, thick and choking with the tears in his throat. “Will I?”

”Yes... Do you... Do you know what people will say? ‘Oh there goes... There goes old Hinata... Already looks like an old crone and he’s only... Only twenty four.’” And he smiled. He had to have felt it, had to have known he was dying in Hinata’s arms, and yet he smiled. With blood on his lips, he smiled. 

And of course Hinata smiled back, of course he did, what else could he do? He smiled and the pull of his muscles tore his heart into a hundred different pieces. He had wondered why it was still beating. 

Tsubaki had tried to say something else, but his lungs stopped letting him speak and he gagged, desperately tried to suck in a breath. What part of himself he could still control had convulsed in Hinata’s arms, tensed and shivered until he coughed up a mouthful of blood, then two, three, it was happening too fast. When those eyes locked onto Hinata again, there was something frantic in them, something absolutely terrified, and it hurt Hinata so much worse then he’d ever thought he could be hurt. How was it not killing him too? “Hinata.”

Even then, his blood-soaked, terror gasped name was softened with love. Said with care. 

“Tsubaki.” What else could he say?

”I- I-“ His hand, wet with his own blood, shaking as much as his voice, had pawed weakly at Hinata’s chest, slick fingers curling around his armour, like Hinata could help him. Like he could keep him from this. “Don’t want- Die- Help me.”

Hinata doesn’t know how that didn’t kill him. 

“Love you.”

Hinata doesn’t know how that didn’t kill him. 

He had held Tsubaki closer. “I love you.” He’d kissed his head. “I love you.” He’d kissed his cheek. “Tsubaki, Tsubaki, my partner, my love, I love you, Tsubaki.” He’s kissed him on the lips and Tsubaki had shivered. Had sighed out his final breath against Hinata’s mouth. 

Hinata remembers screaming. 

Remembers throwing his head back and  _screaming._  Screaming raw rage to the sky that looked like blood, to the sun that had not yet fully risen. 

Tsubaki had been warm. 

The house was cold. 

The sky, red with dawn again, hurt his eyes and not because it was getting brighter. He turned away, went to the fireplace, stoked the old embers till the flames returned and tended it till it roared. He put wood down. He set up a kettle. He waited as the lines of his small home became outlined in blue, then in its true colours as the sun pulled itself into the sky like a pegasus had long ago. 

The kettle screamed. Hinata took it down. He made tea. Drank it as the morning truly began. 

He’d gone after the archer that did it. He remembers the rage. The hate. How it had burned in his blood, pooled in his hands, flowed into his blade, remembered the look on the Nohr soldier’s face just before he hacked the man’s head off. And then he went after the arms that pulled the bowstring. Then the legs that had held him up. Hacking and swinging and cutting, by the time Corrin and the others and found him he’d just been stabbing his sword into a pile of bloody mush and bone fragment, methodically pulling it out and pushing it back in, tears cutting tracks through the dirt and sweat and blood on his face.

The man’s blood had been hot on his hands.

The cup of tea was hot in his hands.

He watched the fire burn, watched the sky finally- finally- turn blue, listened to the birds sing their territory claim. The fire was warm. So was the tea.

The house was warm. 

But Hinata was still cold. 


End file.
